OTTAWA – Canadian Media Production Association past-president Norm Bolen focused the final presentation at Prime Time in Ottawa 2013 on the presence – or lack – of Canadian feature films on Canadian TV. It's the theme underpinning the application he and a team of production industry heavyweights will present to the CRTC on April 23 in support of Starlight, The Canadian Movie Channel.
It's a subject many convention delegates have heard and debated numerous times before, spanning decades for some. On the event's first day, Starlight backers and veteran production executives Robert Lantos and Victor Loewy slammed Canadian broadcasters for doing far too little to bring Canadian films to Canadian television and Pam Dinsmore, vice-president, regulatory at Rogers Communications, argued that the domestic industry does everything it should – through acquisitions, VOD and other avenues – to support its filmmakers.
But Bolen's pitch at Prime Time Friday was unopposed and did not invite audience questions. He said the Starlight team is asking the CRTC to license the service—that will air feature films, feature documentaries, TV movies, miniseries and programs about Canadian filmmakers, without commercials—as a 9(1)(h) or must-carry service with a mandatory $0.45 monthly wholesale rate – and a probable $0.90 cost per month on consumers' subscription TV bills. Starlight's promo brochure says the cost is “one-tenth the retail rate currently charged by Netflix in Canada.”
That mandatory wholesale fee on all subscription TV households would bring in nearly $60 million annually.
“The drama industry in TV is thriving,” Bolen said, “but not for feature films.” Mainstream broadcasters that used to invest in or acquire features, such as Citytv, no longer make significant investments, while CTV's and Global's licences have not required them to do so. Between 2004 and 2011, the number of these films on “relevant” English specialty channels has declined steadily. In some ways this is understandable, he noted, given that features and documentaries are generally one-off “orphans,” hard to finance, schedule and promote.
But then again, he pointed out, Canadian TV drama series were expected to fade away, too, until Cancon regulations came along.
Starlight would air 100% English- and French-language theatrical feature films and feature documentaries in prime time along with “other content” in off-peak hours, such as miniseries about films and filmmakers. Viewers living outside major centres, he said, could see titles they would not normally see. The brochure notes that Canadians can download Canadian titles from iTunes or elsewhere “but at a cost far exceeding” that of Starlight.
The brochure adds that this service would be multi-platform and, “subject to rights clearance,” Starlight would allow streaming onto computers, tablets and mobile devices, on demand, at no extra charge to subscribers. The movies would be available in closed-captioned versions.
A key element of the new service would be the Starlight Feature Film Fund, which Bolen noted would fully finance eight to 12 theatrical features each year, except for contributions expected from federal tax credits. Starlight would “let producers keep their provincial tax credits,” Bolen said, “a revolutionary idea.” The business plan indicates more than $22 million would flow into the fund each year. Only independent producers could apply for financing and none of the channel's investors would be eligible to receive money from it. Seventy per cent of any returns on Starlight's investments would be reinvested in Canadian programming.
The channel would be committed to negotiating a terms of trade agreement with the CMPA, Bolen added. In one of the presentation's video clips, Lantos said the service could bring more than 3,000 English and French theatrical feature films, along with 24 animated features, 340 feature docs and more than 1,200 TV movies to Canadian viewers.
